Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 2 of 2) - Sir John Rhys

1. The legend lays it down as a fact that the father was very wicked.

2. It makes his descendants also wicked like him.

3. It represents the same punishment overtaking father and sons, ancestor and descendants.

4. The simplest way to secure this kind of equal justice was, no doubt, to let the offending ancestors live on to see their descendants of the generation for whose time the vengeance had been fixed, and to let them be swept away with them in one and the same cataclysm, as in the Welsh versions of the Syfađon and Kenfig legends, possibly also in those of Ỻyn Tegid and Tyno Helig, which are not explicit on this point.

Let us for a moment examine the indications of the time to which the vengeance is put off. In the case of the landed families of ancient Wales, every member of them had his position and liabilities settled by his pedigree, which had to be exactly recorded down to the eighth generation or eighth lifetime in Gwyneđ, and to the seventh in Gwent and Dyfed. Those generations were reckoned the limits of recognized family relationship according to the Welsh Laws, and to keep any practical reckoning of the kind, extending always back some two centuries, must have employed a class of professional men[14]. In any case the ninth generation, called in Welsh y nawfed âch, which is a term in use all over the Principality at the present day, is treated as lying outside all recognized kinship. Thus if AB wishes to say that he is no relation to CD, he will say that he is not related o fewn y nawfed âch, ‘within the ninth degree,’ or hyd y nawfed âch, ‘up to the ninth degree,’ it being understood that in the ninth degree and beyond it no relationship is reckoned. Folklore stories, however, seem to suggest another interpretation of the word âch, and fewer generations in the direct line as indicated in the following table. For the sake of simplicity the founder of the family is here assumed to have at least two sons, A and B, and each succeeding generation to consist of one son only; and lastly the women are omitted altogether:—

Tâd I(Father)
1
	Brother A	II	B	Mâb (Son)
	2			2
i	Cousin A^a	III	B^a	Wyr (Grandson)
	3			3
ii	Cousin A^b	IV	B^b	Gorwyr (Great-Grandson)
	4			4
iii	Cousin A^c	V	B^c	Esgynnyđ (G.G.Grandson)
	5			5
iv	Cousin A^d	VI	B^d	Goresgynnyđ(G.G.G.Grandson).

In reckoning the relationships between the collateral members of the family, one counts not generations or begettings, not removes or degrees, but ancestry or the number of ancestors, so that the father or founder of the family only counts once. Thus his descendants A^d and B^d in the sixth generation or lifetime, are fourth cousins separated from one another by nine ancestors: that is, they are related in the ninth âch. In other words, A^d has five ancestors and B^d has also five, but as they have one ancestor in common, the father of the family, they are not separated by 5 + 5 ancestors, but by 5 + 5 - 1, that is by 9. Similarly, one being always subtracted, the third cousins A^c and B^c are related in the seventh âch, and the second cousin in the fifth âch: so with the others in odd numbers downwards, and also with the relatives reckoned upwards to the seventh or eighth generation, which would mean collaterals separated by eleven or thirteen ancestors respectively. This reckoning, which is purely conjectural, is based chiefly on the Kenfig story, which foretold the vengeance to come in the ninth âch and otherwise in the time of the goresgynnyđ, that is to say in the sixth lifetime. This works out all right if only by the ninth âch we understand the generation or lifetime when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, for that is no other than the sixth from the founder of the family. The Welsh version of the Ỻynclys legend fixes on the same generation, as it says yn oes wyrion, gorwyrion, esgynnyđ a goresgynnyđ, ‘in the lifetime of grandsons, great-grandsons, ascensors, and their children,’ for these last’s time is the sixth generation. In the case of the Syfađon legend the time of the vengeance is the ninth cenhedlaeth or generation, which must be regarded as probably a careless way of indicating the generation when the collaterals are separated by nine ancestors, that is to say the sixth from the father of the family. It can hardly have the other meaning, as the sinning ancestors are represented as then still living. The case of the Tyno Helig legend is different, as we have the time announced to the offending ancestor described as amser dy wyrion, dy orwyrion, a dy esgynyđion, ‘the time of thy grandsons, thy great-grandsons, and thy ascensors,’ which would be only the fifth generation with collaterals separated only by seven ancestors, and not nine. But the probability is that goresgynyđion has been here accidentally omitted, and that the generation indicated originally was the same as in the others. This, however, will not explain the Bala legend, which fixes the time for the third generation, namely, immediately after the birth of the offending prince’s first grandson. If, however, as I am inclined to suppose, the sixth generation with collaterals severed by nine ancestors was the normal term in these stories, it is easy to understand that the story-teller might wish to substitute a generation nearer to the original offender, especially if he was himself to be regarded as surviving to share in the threatened punishment: his living to see the birth of his first grandson postulated no extraordinary longevity.

The question why fairy vengeance is so often represented deferred for a long time can no longer be put off. Here three or four answers suggest themselves:—

1. The story of the Curse of Pantannas relates how the offender was not the person punished, but one of his descendants a hundred or more years after his time, while the offender is represented escaping the fairies’ vengeance because he entreated them very hard to let him go unpunished. All this seems to me but a sort of protest against the inexorable character of the little people, a protest, moreover, which was probably invented comparatively late.

2. The next answer is the very antithesis of the Pantannas one; for it is, that the fairies delay in order to involve all the more men and women in the vengeance wreaked by them: I confess that I see no reason to entertain so sinister an idea.